Good news for those who feel socially awkward making small talk with their Lyft driver: Soon you may not have to, because there won't be a driver.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that the app-based car service and investor GM are gearing up to begin testing self-driving electric taxis on public roads — and you may have the opportunity to hitch a ride. The report notes that the companies are planning to unleash a fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolts in an undisclosed city within a year.

The pilot will reportedly rely on technology GM is acquiring through its $1 billion purchase of San Francisco-based autonomous vehicle technology maker Cruise Automation.

Your taxi won't be driverless right away, however. In an effort to quell regulatory concerns, the cars will have a driver behind the wheel, just in case. But that is expected to change in the future: "The driver is expected to eventually be obsolete," the report notes.

While details of the program are still being worked out, the idea is that Lyft customers will have the option of being picked up by an autonomous car when ordering up a ride through the company's app.

"We will want to vet the autonomous tech between Cruise, GM, and ourselves and slowly introduce this into markets," Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's product director, said in an interview with the Journal. That will "ensure that cities would have full understanding of what we are trying to do here."

The effort, according to the report, is "directed mostly at challenging [Google parent] Alphabet and Uber," both of which have been working on autonomous vehicles.